Lauba, contemporary art gallery in Črnomerec, Zagreb, Croatia

Lauba is an art gallery housed in a former industrial building with high ceilings and contemporary interior spaces that display paintings, sculptures, installations, and multimedia works. The spacious layout allows multiple exhibition zones to function simultaneously for different artistic formats.

The hall was built in 1910 as a riding arena within an Austro-Hungarian cavalry barracks, designed by the Zagreb firm Emil Eisner and Adolf Ehrlich. From 1924 to 2008 it was used by the Zagreb Textile Mill (later Tvornica tekstila Trgovišće), which had produced high-quality damask since 1923. In 2007 AGP Design won an invited competition to convert it into an art space, preserving historical layers such as the former weaving floor level and a swollen eastern wall.

The name Lauba comes from a childhood game in Vrbovec, played along a circular avenue of trees whose crowns almost touched; owner Tomislav Kličko chose it for that personal resonance, and it may trace to the German laub, leaves. The Filip Trade Collection of modern and postmodern Croatian artists forms the core, shown through the Non-permanent exhibition, whose segments change monthly alongside parallel shows and events.

Lauba is at Prilaz baruna Filipovića 23A in the Črnomerec district, in western Zagreb. The 1,350 m² hall has no storage space, so the depot sits inside the exhibition area; movable aluminium panels, each 5 m wide and 3.5 m high, are rearranged to open the room or form a dense maze.

The building retains traces of its factory past, giving the spaces a raw physicality that typical white-walled galleries lack. This combination of industrial bones and contemporary art creates an unexpected setting where visitors feel the weight of history beneath new work.